fanofthegenre | [ late night at the precinct ]

Entry tags:

oom,
rick castle

[ late night at the precinct ]

Long nights of paperwork are nothing new for Beckett.

Spending the dull hours of the evening filing away even duller paperwork is a routine she's grown accustomed to; the life of a detective isn't always preoccupied with chasing down a suspect or interrogating a guilty party. Sometimes, there's the moments that aren't always worth writing about, the files she somehow manages to let pile up while she's doing the more exciting parts of her job. It's a vicious cycle, the way the tedious work tends to sneak up on her when she's least expecting it.

Every now and then, her eyes flick to the clock, tracking the time, gauging how many hours she has left to finish what she's working on before she'll be getting absolutely no sleep at all. She's the only one here, apart from the night guard working the desk downstairs, and every now and then she stops to stretch, or to refresh her coffee after fiddling with some of the dials on the espresso machine - the machine that nearly requires a PhD from Starbucks to know how to use.

Sitting back down again at her desk, she rolls her shoulders and then her neck, settling in to wrap up a few last-minute details on the open file in front of her.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

The scapula is a cheat. It hides a couple of different joints and protects the arm from harm when it bends outward -- it's also a notorious sticking place for knots and kinks, mostly because they can hide beneath the flat shell of bone. Castle's betting dollars to donuts that Beckett's got at least two or three knots right there. He moves his thumbs into position, pushing them around the outside curve of her shoulder blades --

"Oh yeah," he says, low and pleased, "the mother lode."

It hurts a little, starting off, but it's a good pain, the kind of pain you suffer through with the knowledge things will be looser later on. Beckett sucks in a breath through gritted teeth when Castle's thumbs make contact with those bothersome knots, relentlessly working them into breaking up under pressure. Her hands clutch onto the arms of her chair and she rolls her shoulders forward.

"Don't get too excited," she softly replies.

"What's not to get excited about?" Down and out, again and again, Castle's thumbs push the knots apart. He knows this part of it is painful, but there're endorphins to consider. Relief from tension you didn't know you had is a hell of a high.

He works by feel and by the cadence of her breath. Short and stuttered means he's getting somewhere. Long and tired means he should move on.

"Ask me again in ten minutes or so," Beckett murmurs, her voice trailing off at the end of the thought as she draws in another relaxed breath.

The thought that any one person could walk in on what's going on hasn't even occurred to her; neither has the thought of asking him to stop, because it feels too good to tell him to put the brakes on things just yet. One more minute, she keeps telling herself. Just one more, and maybe one more after that.

Castle can count on one hand the number of times he and Beckett have been this close, outside of bumping shoulders while walking and the infrequent occasion in which she has to shove him out of the way (for his own safety) when they're after a suspect. He doesn't mind admitting that he's feeling a little greedy now.

He slides his left hand up the side of her neck, gently easing her cheek into the cup of his palm. His other hand attends to the right side of her neck, to the long tendon that stretches from her throat to the edge of her shoulder. Her hair falls across the backs of his knuckles.

That earns him a groan, somewhere between the hitch of breath and the way she leans her head into his hand, her cheek cradled in his palm while the fingers of the other move up and down along the slope of her neck and shoulder. He's making it even more difficult for her to want to break contact.

"Where did you pick this up, anyway?" she asks, turning her head slightly, and as she speaks, her lips graze the pad of his thumb.

His body may as well be a superconductor for all the ways that one sound charges through his system. "Oh, Beckett," he rumbles, more of a vibration than speech, "I've got talents you don't even know about."

Her skin, the nerve endings already charged from the attentive massage, is suddenly overcome by goosebumps, a noticeable shiver trailing up her spine.

"Really."

He finishes her right side, easing her head in the other direction with the backs of his knuckles. "Uh huh." His thumb tucks discretely behind her left ear, pauses, then draws a small, tight circle against the back of the 'lobe.

She's fairly loose now, but Castle can still find sore spots. He tends to each one tenderly but with purpose, wanting to leave her boneless in the chair.

She's so relaxed now that it's almost as if there's no filter between her brain and the sounds she's making: everything ranging from low groans to soft, high whimpers when his fingers curl behind her earlobe.

She'd blush if she were an outsider; here, all she can do is lean into his hands as if he'd known this was what she'd needed all along.

Edited 2010-02-10 04:11 (UTC)

Part of him remains courteously objective to her reactions. A bigger, more prevalent part of him, wonders if this is what Kate Beckett sounds like when she lets herself go. Would she sound any different if he had his hands on her in a more intimate setting? Would she be more or less vocal?

He skims his hands up the sides of her throat, pulling the crown of her head against his stomach. His thumbs resettle beneath her shoulder blades, pulling the last nerve bundles apart, his palms gently kneading her shoulders to spread the feeling around.

"You're not saying anything," she notes faintly, her eyes still closed, even if she is obviously aware that she's resting back against him now while he finishes up along the middle of her back and either side of her spine.

"Is my back that crooked?"

She laughs at her own humor, quietly, though she notices that her body doesn't tense even the way it had earlier when she'd been in pure resting mode.

"You're not the best case I've ever seen, but you're definitely not the worst." He pushes his thumbs over the middle of her back, rocking her forward in her chair. "'More like someone who should learn to take it easy every once in a while."

"You're not the first person to tell me so," she admits, leaning forward to rest her forearms on the surface of the desk.

"Though I don't think it's a lesson I'll be able to put into practice too often."

"I know."

The long, graceful bow of her back is exposed to him and Castle uses the angle to push his thumbs all the way down the middle of her spine, palms skimming the depressions between her ribs.

"If it weren't for Milliways - "

She breaks off to release an audible sigh, her back arching slightly.

" - I don't think I'd get much of an off-time at all."

Castle slips his left hand around her middle, palm flat against her stomach, while he rubs the side of his right hand over the bumps in her spine, trying to encourage better blood flow. He's nearly bent over her now, his chin hovering over her shoulder, the top of his chest against her upper back. 'Just close enough to be within the boundaries of propriety.

"Thank god for the broken space-time continuum at Milliways, huh?"

"Mmhmm," Beckett wordlessly agrees.

She's relaxed enough as to be almost completely limp in his arms, her hands clenching into visible vists and then relaxing, palm-flat, against the files on her desk. There's something about this form of proximity that's stoking some kind of heat down low in her stomach, a burgeoning flame that will burst into a helpless fire that she won't have an iota of control over.

He unfolds his fingers and passes the flat of his palm over her lower back. "Ah --" part sigh, part victory grunt "-- you're a little tight down here, too." His cheek moves against the part in her hair. "Man, you're really making me work for it, aren't you?"

"I never said I would be easy," Beckett manages, in a light tease, the flat of her stomach occasionally shifting against Castle's palm when she sways with the motion of his other hand.

"Yeah, I figured. I deal in adjectives and 'easy' doesn't even break the Top 100 with you." He pushes his hand to the top of her ribcage, holding her in place while he pushes his fingertips down the length of her spine.

"So what adjectives are on the list?"

Curiosity wins out; the question is also mostly to distract her from thinking too hard about any visceral responses he may be working out of her system.

His chuckles and, given how close they are, the sound registers as a physical thrum through his body to hers.

"Nuh uh," he says. "You want compliments, you're going to have to pay for the Platinum Package."

She clucks her tongue against her teeth, slowly shaking her head.

"What does that entail, exactly?"

"I get to use the bullhorn the next time we corner a suspect. And I have full access to the siren."

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